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The New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels brings together leading names in EU policymaking, researchers, designers and grassroots actors to discuss and learn from each other. The biennial event showcases sustainable projects from across Europe. One of NEB’s guiding ideas is to help imagine a better future within the limits of the planet and thereby normalise efforts to advance it.

Aalto University is taking part with the exhibition The Pathfinders: Overcoming circular economy bottlenecks. It presents multidisciplinary research that tackles bottlenecks in the circular economy relating to construction materials, battery metals and textiles. 

Although the circular economy has been a hot topic for discussion for more than a decade, its practical implementation is still in its infancy. The staggering truth is that nearly 93% of all materials used globally are still from virgin resources, with only about 7% of the world economy functioning circularly.(Source: Circularity Gap Report 2025 by Circle Economy & Deloitte Global)

Circular models hit into many speed bumps, such as the high cost of developing recyclable products and processes, the complexity of global supply chains, a weak secondary raw materials market, and social norms that still do not fully accept the worn and torn.

The Pathfinders exhibition takes the circular economy from theory to practice and presents projects that seek to solve the circular economy’s difficult challenges and bring about a paradigm shift for entire sectors. 

The exhibition features the project Closing Loops, led by assistant professor and architect Antti Lehto, which studies a circular economy storage concept, the European T-REX textile recycling project, whose social impact has been studied at Aalto University under the leadership of professor Kirsi Niinimäki, and the BATCircle3.0 consortium, which researches the recycling of battery metals and whose principal investigator is professor Mari Lundström and project director is doctor Sipi Seisko.

Aalto University's The Pathfinders exhibition is open from 10 to 12 June in the Museum of Art & History, Parc du Cinquantenaire, stand 31 at hall 2, Brussels, Cinquantenaire Park 10. It is free of charge and open to everyone. 

The New European Bauhaus Festival hosts other interesting programme as well.